


time is priceless, but it's free

by fortunatelyshynerd



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Time Travel, i needed more fremary content ok, parentdale, slight angst at parts, this has been in progress for a while so i just decided to post what ive got, time travellers wife au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-21
Updated: 2019-06-21
Packaged: 2020-05-16 03:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19310056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortunatelyshynerd/pseuds/fortunatelyshynerd
Summary: Travelling is strange, to say the least.It’s quick; starting and ending with the very sudden realisation that the yellow coffee mug you are holding, the favourite red plaid shirt with the holes in the elbows, the socks that your lovely wife bought you for Christmas three years ago, the kitchen that you lovingly refurbished, the very ground beneath your feet have all vanished. All at once.But Fred always comes back. Like an elastic band stretched far enough, he always snaps back the start.(aka the 'time travellers wife' au no one asked for)





	time is priceless, but it's free

Travelling is strange, to say the least.

 

It’s quick; starting and ending with the very sudden realisation that the yellow coffee mug you are holding, the favourite red plaid shirt with the holes in the elbows, the socks that your lovely wife bought you for christmas three years ago, the kitchen that you lovingly refurbished, the very ground beneath your feet have all vanished. All at once.

 

Then you are naked and alone, waiting it out for everything to snap back into place. A tennis court in the gardens of an anonymous mansion, knee-deep in a green-black bog somewhere in East Texas, facedown an anonymous motel room in California. Watching your eleven year old self mow neighbour’s lawns for pocket change.

 

There’s a reason Doctor Samuels calls it  _ ‘displacement’. _

 

But Fred always comes back. Like an elastic band stretched far enough, he always snaps back the start.

 

_ \---- _

 

_ Fred is 13 & 21 _

 

The first time it happened, Fred was thirteen.

 

He was at Hermione’s birthday party, and had forgotten her present. It was a silver charm for her bracelet, in the shape of a heart. He knew that she’d like it, mainly because Alice had told him that Hermione told her to tell him that she wanted it. But he had left it on his desk in the hurry to leave, and now he was sprinting back home.

 

His heart was pounding heavy in his chest, and he could hear his blood beating in his ears. He’s about to turn the corner onto his street, and suddenly, with an almighty crash, he runs head on into a wall.

 

For a moment, he thought he had been hit by a car. But then something hard lands on the top of his head. Clutching his face with one hand, he reached out blindly for whatever had hit him. A photograph - a red haired girl smiles brightly out of the frame, wearing dark sunglasses and a light blue dress. Where the hell is he?

 

Before he can properly assess his surroundings - a pretty generic hallway; small, painted white, with more pictures lining the hall - a voice calls.

 

“Who’s there?” The voice is female, and getting louder. “I’m telling you now, I’ve got a bat and I’m not afraid to use it!” The girl from the picture comes slowly down the stairs wielding a wooden baseball bat. Until suddenly, she stops.

 

“Fred?” Her voice is different; she’s not scared anymore.

 

“How do you know my name?” he replies, voice shaking. She rushes towards him, as if to comfort him, but blanches when he shys away. “Where the fuck am I?”

 

She’s nervous now, biting her lip. “This is the first time, isn’t it? Hermione’s birthday party, right?”

 

“How the fuck do you know that?” Fred backs away, until he crashes against the door. It’s only then that he realises that he’s naked and yelps loudly.

 

The girl quickly shrugs off her cardigan and offers it to him, almost apologetically. Fred snatches it out of her hand and ties it strategically around his waist. “Where the hell am I? And how do you know my name?”

 

She sighs, “Because we know each other, Fred Andrews. Or at least we will.”

 

“What the FUCK does that mean?”

 

“Okay, Fred this is only going to last a few minutes, the first time only did. When you get back, don’t go to the party, talk to your Dad. And to Oscar. They’ll tell you everything.”

 

Fred shook his head, desperately, “What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Don’t go to the party, Fred. You’ll understand when you get back.”

 

His stomach lurched, and he fell to the floor in front of the door. The girl rushed to help him, and he could hear someone walking up the steps to the front door. A voice rang out, clear as a bell. “Mary, you in there?” The voice was familiar, but he didn’t know how, like a song played in a different room so you could only hear the bass.

 

He felt like he was going to pass out. He grasped the girl’s arm, “What. Is. Happening?”

 

She reached out and stroked his hair, almost tenderly. “You’ll know soon Freddie.” No one called him Freddie. He could hear a key turning in the lock.

 

\---

 

He came to, quickly, slumped on the lawn outside his house. His clothes had returned to him, but his stomach hadn’t. Fred clamped a hand over his mouth and ran into the kitchen and wretched into the kitchen sink.

 

“Whoa! Fred are you okay?” Oscar blew into the room like a bespectacled hurricane in a stripey dressing gown.

 

Fred wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t turn around. “I was walking home, and  _ something happened. _ ”

 

Oscar went pale. “Are you okay? Did someone attack you?” He began pulling at Fred’s jacket and shirt, looking for bruises. “Who was-”

 

“No.” Fred stood up straight, and pushed his brother away. “Something happened. As in I was crossing the street in Riverdale, outside, and then a second later I was naked, inside some random lady’s house!”

 

“Fuck.” Oscar stood there, seemingly struck dumb. “Sit down,” he pointed to the round wooden kitchen table, “I’ll go get Dad.” As Fred sat down, he called out to his older brother, the anger drained from him.

 

“Oscar?” He turned around in the doorway. “What the hell happened?”

 

“I’ll explain soon. Dad’s better at it than I am.”

 

When his father walked in, dressed in his work clothes, glasses perched on his head, Fred couldn’t hold back the tears. While he was sniffling, Oscar poured three mugs of strong coffee, and after a quick glance towards their father, splashed a generous amount of whiskey in each. When he passed one to Fred, he was unsure whether to drink it. Artie chuckled. “You don’t think I know about you and F.P at those parties? And after what you’ve been through tonight, I think you’ll need it.”

 

“Especially after what we’ve got to tell you,” Oscar quipped quietly, still staring in the depths of his cup.

 

His father paused, then after taking a sip of the coffee, began to speak. “Okay, Fred, after what happened tonight, you’re a grown man, so I’m gonna be straight with you. You time travelled tonight.”

 

Fred spat out his drink. “You’re joking. This is an actual joke.” He looked to Oscar, hoping that a teasing grin will greet him, but his brother is deadly serious. “You’re joking,” he repeated, his voice trailing off.

 

“I’m afraid he’s not, little brother.”

 

“We don’t know why it happens. It just…”

 

“... Does.” Oscar finished for him.

 

He had time travelled. Somewhere between the corner of Maplewood Avenue and his house on Dean Street, he had travelled in time. That girl was from another time. Maybe she wasn’t even born yet. Maybe she was six feet under. He searched his memory for all he could remember around her; dark red hair, pale skin, freckles sprayed across a straight nose.

 

“Every man in the Andrews family does it. For some reason it skips the girls.”

 

“Does Mom know?”

 

“Of course she knows. Hell, that’s how I met her for the first time. I was nineteen and stealing clothes from your grandmother’s washing line, and she caught me. Turns out we’d already been dating for a year and a half. Well, twenty four year old me had.”

 

Fred tried to wrap his mind around that. “That’s so freaking weird!”

 

“I suppose it is,” Artie chuckled.

 

“So can you - we, tell when it’s going to happen?”

 

“Sometimes, sometimes not.”

 

Oscar shrugged. “For me, stress and excitement can trigger it. But it’s not a hard and fast rule.”

 

“But, Fred, and this serious: if you feel it coming on, make sure no one sees you. And if you’re doing something dangerous - stop.”

 

Oscar swigged directly from the amber bottle. “Remember when I drove you and F.P to the beach, and I did a u-turn in the middle of the road and was in the bathroom for twenty minutes, because I said I ate bad shrimp?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Well, I went straight from that bathroom to somewhere in Maine. I was wondering around that damned beach for three days!”

 

“It can last that long?” Three days, he had been somewhere, out of time for three days. But for him, right then, it had been twenty or so minutes, quickly spent with him and F.P sipping coke from the cooler in the back seat.

 

Oscar quickly backtracked. “That’s really unusual Fred! Most of the time it’s just a few hours - like your’s it was what, five minutes?”

 

“Shorter than that probably.”

 

Oscar leaned forward again, after a moment of loaded silence. “I’m not going to sugarcoat this Fred - this is a big deal.”

 

“A big deal.” His father echoed, a serious look etched into his usually jovial features. “Fred, this changes your life in an instant.”

 

“Yeah,” Fred took a deep drink out of the red mug he had previously left untouched. “I guessed.”

 

\---

 

_ Fred is 31 & 13 _

 

The first time Fred met himself, it was a month or so after he first travelled.

 

That night, his mother had knocked lightly on the door of his attic bedroom, and held him as he cried in her lap, then in the most Bunny Andrews way possible, took him by the shoulders and told him everything would be fine. It most certainly wasn’t fine when Hermione refused to talk to him the next day because he had skipped out on her birthday party. Instead she had stuck her nose in the air, turned on her heel, and flounced away; leaving him and F.P alone at lunch. He still gave Sierra the charm to give to her though.

 

His brother had been taking him out in the evenings to practice what to do if (when) it happened again. These ‘training sessions’ as Oscar generously called them, mostly involved strategising how to get clothes without people noticing, how to pick locks and open windows for slightly more dire situations, and running. So much running.

 

It was on a balmy Friday night, that Oscar had sent Fred on a mission to run around the block three times, while he was at the store. He was on his second loop around, counting mail-boxes as he went, that saw a naked man come running out of the gap between number 34 and number 36. The guy, extremely naked, but looking surprisingly calm, barrelled towards him. Fred immediately sped up.

 

“Hey!” The guy yelled at him, managing to keep up with him somehow.

 

“Get the fuck away from me!” Fred yelled back, pelting towards his door.

 

“Come on!” Fred shut the door as the guy ran up the steps.

 

“I’m calling the police!” Fred said loudly, as he locked the door and keeping one hand against the door (that the naked guy was still trying to get in through) scrabbled at the hallway table for the phone.

 

The guy lowered his voice. “Dude, don’t call the police!”

 

Fred, scoffing, replied “Well, _  dude _ , I do have a naked crazy man following me and trying to break into my house!”

 

“No, no, damn it - Fred. I’m you.”

 

Fred stilled against the door. “What?”

 

“I’m you, but from 2007! You’ve travelled right, a few months ago to M- the red headed girl’s house, you know what I’m talking about!”

 

“How do I know you aren’t lying?”

 

Through the door, the naked guy sighed, loudly. “You broke your ankle playing soccer with Oscar when you were seven, you and Hermione didn’t kiss during seven minutes in heaven, you have a crush on Bruce Springsteen and -”

 

Fred quickly swung the door open. “This is weird,” he said, staring himself in the face.

 

“I know, it’s a trip, but let me in, I’m naked.”

 

Other Fred stood awkwardly in the hallway, until Fred grabbed his father’s long coat off the rack and handed it to him. Once he had securely belted himself in, Other Fred began to walk around the house, Fred trailing behind him. Occasionally he would make a cryptic comment under his breath  _ (‘Alice was right, the long hair was a bad look’) _ , or pick something random off a shelf and look it at like it was the finest treasure  _ (his dog’s water bowl, his mother’s good gloves, a cracked yellow coffee cup with the handle super-glued back on and Oscar’s name scratched into it). _

 

Other Fred was confidently making his way to Fred’s room, but stopped outside the door. Fred walked right into his own back.  _ This is a trip. _

 

“You can go in, you know, if you want,” he said awkwardly. How long was this going to last, he thought to himself.  

 

“I’ve not got long left, don’t worry,” Other Fred replied, quickly, but stuffed his hands into the coats pockets. “It’s not my room anymore - it’s yours. You lead, kid.”

 

When they entered, and Fred had opened the door and kicked some dirty laundry under the bed, Other Fred sat in silence on his bed; just looking around, as if in a museum filled with priceless artifacts. They faced each other, and Fred examined his future. His hair was shorter, well cut, and his eyes had some laughter lines at the corners. He was squinting slightly, looking over Fred’s shoulder at the calendar on the wall, chuckling to himself. It looked like his parent’s terrible eyesight had finally caught up to him.

 

“Don’t you have any questions? Well, I know you have some - I remember asking them.” Other Fred said, plainly, before getting up to squint closer at the pictures pinned above his desk.

 

“What do you me- oh, you’ve done this already. You were, well-”

 

“You. And now I’m me. Who is also you.”

 

“It’s a trip.”

 

“Yes it is.” Other Fred nodded, smiling a little.

 

“Are you - do I get married?”

 

“Yes. 5 years last Tuesday, where I’m from.” Fred smiles at that, and Other Fred smiles back, mirrors of each other.  

 

“Any kids?”

 

“One,” he smiled wider. “And before you ask, because I know what you’re thinking - I’m not telling you the name. She picked it.”  

 

“Fine. Do I still play?”

 

“Guitar or baseball?”

 

“Umm, both?”

 

“Guitar - yes. Baseball only occasionally.”

 

Pause. “Is she hot?”

 

“The hottest.”

 

Other Fred put his hand on Fred’s shoulder, and looked at the ticking clock at the wall. “Not long now, kid. It’s seven thirty-one. Ask what you want to ask.”

 

“Who’s the red-headed girl, from the first time? Do I know her? Dad said we circle back to important events, that’s why he met mom, is she important to me? To you?”

 

“She’s very important. Just give it a minute, Fred. Be patient.” And then, like an afterthought, “How’s F.P?”

 

“He’s fine? Why are you asking?”

 

“Oh, no reason! He’s fine in the future, if that’s what you’re asking, aside from a bit of a beer gut and some unfortunate fashion choices in the early 2000s, but who could avoid those.” He prods Fred in the arm, like F.P does when he’s pleased, “Stick with him, kid. He’ll stick with you.”

 

A voice, Oscar, rings out from down the stairs. “Fred? Are you up there, did you run the whole way?”

 

Other Fred goes as white as a sheet, and then says hollowly, “It’s nearly seven thirty-three.”

 

“What do you mean? Why are you looking like that? Does something happen to Oscar?” he grabs his older self by the arm, but he’s already gone, and he ends up just clasping the empty arm of the coat, as it drops unceremoniously to the floor.

 

Oscar’s voice rings out once more, clear as a bell, “Fred? Are you there?”

 

Fred is shaken for a moment, picking his heart up from somewhere near his shoes. Then he straightens up, and calls back, like they were children again, the only boys in the house, playing marco-polo under beds and behind bushes, calling plays in their reedy voices from across the school pitch. “Yeah, I’m here!” Then under his breath, “Right here.”

 

\--

 

_ Fred is 16 & Mary is 16 _

 

There’s a new girl in school - a big deal in a town as small as Riverdale. Her name is Mary Moore, and her father was setting up a law office in town, where the old florist used to be. He had seen them moving in at the weekend, a tall man with fiery red hair carrying a cardboard box marked ‘PAPERS’ in neat sharpie handwriting.

 

Mr Moore came into Pop’s, where Fred has been working all summer, and orders dinner for him and his daughter. Two burgers, two fries, one coke, one strawberry milkshake. While Fred was bussing the tables, Mr Moore had politely quizzed him about the town.

 

“Any good places to eat around here?” he asked, before quickly adding “Aside from here, of course, which looks excellent.”

 

Fred considered for a moment, collecting twisted paper straws to put into the trash. “Here’s great, of course. But most of the real restaurants are in Greendale, about two miles that-a-way,” pointing over his shoulder. “Take-out is good and doesn’t usually take long, but you have to wait longer for pizza. But the pizza’s really good though.”

 

“That’s good. I work most nights, and Mary - that’s my daughter, she’s about your age - tends to order in most of the time.” He chuckled to himself, “she’s a great kid, but the last time she tried to cook, she nearly burned the damn kitchen down!”

 

When his food arrives, he pays in crumpled up notes, but tips generously, and before he leaves presses a professional-looking business card into Fred’s palm. “Give it to your folks - tell them if they never need a lawyer, give me a call.”

 

The card is embossed on one side, with an image of the scales of justice.  _ Archibald Moore, Attorney at Law _

 

The gossip around town, supplied to him by his sister Louise, whose boyfriend’s father works at the local real estate company, is that the mother isn’t around.

 

_ (‘Divorce apparently,” Lou said smartly, before popping a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth. _

 

_ “Stop gossiping, Lou,” his mother replied, pointing her soup spoon at her. “Divorce is a terrible thing. That poor girl.” _

 

_ “She’ll be in Fred’s grade soon”, Oscar supplied. _

 

_ “Well, you must invite her to dinner then,” his mother said to Fred, “And remember to ask if she has any allergies.” _

 

_ “Yeah, we don’t want another Hal situation!” Claire giggled from behind her napkin. Oscar snorted into his water glass. _

 

_ “That wasn’t my fault - he knew he couldn’t eat nuts! I don’t know why he ate the whole thing,” his mother cried - she hated being reminded of this story. They had to call an ambulance, the whole nine-yards. A real embarrassment. _

 

_ “Hal hates being rude,” Fred said, chuckling lightly. “You know that. Last year he let Alice Smith call him Harry for three weeks because he didn’t want to correct her!”) _

  
  


He doesn’t meet her all day, they just keep missing each-other, but he sees her occasionally from a distance, bright red hair loose down her back, a tad taller than Hermione, her school assigned buddy. She’s tall, wearing a pair of well-worn jeans and a dark purple shirt, pushed up at the elbows.

 

He’s travelled more now, and has gotten surprisingly used to flitting out of his current plane of existence every so often. He hasn’t met himself since that conversation in his bedroom, but is better at spotting the signs when they come. A certain feeling that he can’t exactly explain, like the air is pressing hard against his skin like frost clinging to a window, his heart beating strong and loud, so loud, as if Tom Keller is internally banging away inside his head - he only knows that its coming, its coming, its coming

 

_ and then it happens, like a scratched record, skipping around with no warning. he’s there is his time and then. he’s, well, there. wherever or whenever then is _

 

So when he feels  _ it  _ while walking home down mainstreet  _ (‘it’ in italics, capitalised, bold, underlined, graffitied in red on the ‘welcome to riverdale sign’) _  he knows what it means. He can feel his heart beginning to beat out of his chest (fight or flight kicking in, is Oscar’s theory) and he runs, fast, trying to find a place to hide, to vanish somewhere else.

 

He’s flying down the street, feet matching the beat of his heart, hard on the street. Tom Keller is playing bass drum hard in his skull, really going for it, like at the school dance last year, with Sierra sitting admiringly at the sidelines.  

 

Suddenly, he collides with someone walking the other way (it’s his fault, they were just walking minding their own business, not expecting a time travelling teenager to slam into them at fifty miles an hour) and they go flying, skidding onto the pavement. His shirt is torn and his elbow is stinging and bleeding and aching and that feeling is getting stronger.

 

This pretty, red haired stranger then breathes his name in the strangest and most intimate possible way, as if she is meeting an old friend, someone that she loves, and not someone who she has never ever met before -  _ “Fred.” _

 

They’re still sat on the pavement, a tangle of arms and legs, when she repeats his name, more sudden but no less enchanted. “Fred Andrews.”

 

He’s heard her voice before. How does she know his first name, he wonders and doesn’t reply, for his mind is preoccupied with the fact that its coming, its coming -

 

She yanks him unceremoniously to his feet and drags him to the alley next between the library and the laundromat.

 

He can feel her hands around his skinny wrist, and that touch for some reason seems incomprehensible.

He can smell the suds and hear the music that the owner plays, and the stranger is saying something to him, something like ‘I’ll wait’ and ‘don’t worry’.

 

He’s heard her voice before. He’s certain of it -

  
  


\---

 

And then he’s not on hard concrete, but on soft, wet grass. Crickets are chirping around him, and the sky is a heavy, dark blue, no clouds, no stars - the kind of night he’d love to enjoy, if he knew when the hell he was.

 

He can see a house in the distance, tiny lights high up in the sky. He starts towards it, but his mind is back somewhere in 1991 between the laundromat and the library. How did he know her? How did she know him?

 

Fred wrapped his arms around his bare chest, the slight breeze whipping at his arms. He’s still not used to being naked and exposed all the time, but there’s no one around. He tries to decipher when or where he is.

 

Power lines over that hill, so reasonably modern.

 

He can’t see a car parked by the house, so hopefully, no one will be home.

 

As he walks, a window, high, high up, is thrown open and he can hear music. Whoever it is is playing ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ with the volume turned all the way up.  _ ‘Good for them’, he thinks. ‘That’s a great song.’ _

 

He can see a blanked out figure, black against the golden light of the window, and he’s not sure what they’re doing. Then it disappears suddenly.

 

The song switches. Fleetwood Mac,  _ Dreams.  _ Whoever that figure was, had good taste.

 

The song ends, before it gets to that bit at the end with the bass line and the drums, so maybe their taste wasn’t that good. The crickets and the wind fill the air. Suddenly, the figure in the window leans out of the window and yells his name.

 

“Fred!”

 

Her voice carries far and stops him dead in his tracks.

 

He knows her voice.

**Author's Note:**

> hope you enjoyed this! i will be adding more chapters, with mary (and maybe fps?) perspectives, so stay tuned for those!


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